But First, Coffee is a Cry for Help in Cursive

I am aware of what people say about me. That I take coffee too seriously. That a man who color-codes his brewing equipment has, perhaps, lost the plot somewhere. I would like to address this directly, and I would like to do it by pointing at something considerably more unhinged than anything I have ever done: a cup that says "But First, Coffee," sitting on a counter, in cursive, unbothered, judging no one.

Actually — what does that even mean? First before what? Is there a second thing? A third? Nobody has ever finished the sentence. It just sits there, mid-thought, forever, like someone started confessing something and lost their nerve halfway through the cup. It's not a joke. It's not even a full idea. It's four words wearing the outfit of a punchline with nothing behind it, and somehow it ended up on more ceramics than any actual sentence in the English language.

And why cursive? Who decided that? Nobody speaks in cursive. Nobody has ever said "but first, coffee" out loud and had it come out looped and gold-foiled. That's not handwriting, that's a witness protection program for a sentence too embarrassing to say in a normal font. Block letters would out it immediately. Cursive lets it hide in plain sight, on a shelf, next to the good plates, pretending to be decor instead of what it actually is: a confession nobody proofread.

I am accused of being intense about coffee. Meanwhile there is an entire aisle, at every home goods store in the country, dedicated to unfinished sentences in a font nobody uses anywhere else, and not one person has stopped to ask what any of it means. That is the actual madness here. Not the man measuring his pour time. The cup that can't commit to a full thought.

Here is what nobody puts on a cup: the part where I weighed the beans. Where I waited the correct four minutes and not a second longer, because I know precisely what happens to everything that follows if I rush it. That is not decor. That is a small, stubborn discipline performed daily by people who will never once call it that, and it deserves better than a font doing its talking for it.

So finish the sentence, or don't start it. I intend to keep finishing mine, loudly, without cursive, for as long as I am allowed near a kettle.

The bean has spoken.

Oh, shit. They got me too.